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what do you need for rapid coral grouth because i am just not seeing anything pop. i have 2 175 watt M.H. on my 65 with a low fish count and an awsome DAS skimmer . and i do A B calcium everyday, what am i doin rong ?

Not sure you are doing anything wrong. The key to good coral growth for me is consistency and water changes. Keeping your levels very stable and ensuring you stay on pace with good, frequent water changes.

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Never liked the 175W. I had reeflux 14k, coralvue 10k, and xm 20k on an icecap ballast over 12G and never got any color out of my corals except for the reeflux and growth sucked...I then upgraded my tank with a calcium reactor and t5's and am very happy now that i am getting growth and color.

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Originally posted by rkl303 Never liked the 175W. I had reeflux 14k, coralvue 10k, and xm 20k on an icecap ballast over 12G and never got any color out of my corals except for the reeflux and growth sucked...I then upgraded my tank with a calcium reactor and t5's and am very happy now that i am getting growth and color.

I would attribute the growth to the ca reactor added not t-5's...not trying to make this a t-5 vs. mh thread, but I know plenty of people with 150w over small tanks and they have awesome growth.

What are you holding your CA and alk levels at? I used to run my alk around 9 dkh and CA around 420. Accidentally bumped my CA up to 440-450 with the same alk levels and I can see growth daily now. Not saying these are the "ideal" levels, but my tank is certainly happy with them. JMO
tom

Ah...a goat dammit, I used a pig no wonder..but in all seriousness I to am experiencing very slow growth. My tank is a year old now, and I look @ some of the growth threads on here, and i'm getting less growth over the course of the year the some people do in a few months.

I'm struggling to figure out what the cause of it may be.. My parameters are all fine, yet something is amiss. I'm tempted to switch from 400w 20k XM's to 10ks but I have seen a number of tanks with excellent growth using the same lighting combo as me so I don't think this is the issue. I'm kinda leaning towards my leathers, yet I would think my weekly 10% water change habit, in combination with my water volume, would negative the majority of effect they would have.

I run carbon 24/7, ROWA, I feed light (1 cube per day cyclops a few times a week)

My Parameters are as follows

Salinity 1.026
Temp 79.5-81.0
Calcium recently crept up to 490 or so..which means to me my corals aren't using the calcium available to them
Ph 8.15-8.25
Alk - Unknown but I believe if I had ALK issus my Ph would be off.
Magnesium 1420-1440
Silicate 0
Phosphates 0 (when last tested)
Nitrite and Nitrate haven't tested in ages but I have no reason to believe there is any present in my system.

Skimmer wise I'm running a BM250, and just recently added a second skimmer back on the system w/ozone.

Other thoughts may include my light period as I only run my halides for 5.5 hours a day, while my t5s run for around 10 hours..yet I don't believe this to be the issue.

i haven't checked my levels in a little wile i guses that would help im also going to be changing my M.H. from a reeflux 14k to a XM 10 k for better growth and am saving for a calcium reactore as we speak its just that there klike 500$ wich is nuts but i need to do it

Originally posted by scuba connor i haven't checked my levels in a little wile i guses that would help im also going to be changing my M.H. from a reeflux 14k to a XM 10 k for better growth and am saving for a calcium reactore as we speak its just that there klike 500$ wich is nuts but i need to do it

You do not NEED a calcium reactor, I run my 75G fully stocked SPS tank with 2 part; and I like it better than when I had my calcium reactor. Just figure out exactly how much 2-part your corals use everyday and dose that. Under 100G, I really think a calcium reactor is unneccasary.

High flow, decent lighting (halide, solatube, T5's), low PO4 and NO3, low nutrient levels, run carbon (no more than a week as it will get quickly saturated and then spew out everything that it soaked up, good calc, alk and magnesium levels.

The odd water change is good to replace trace elements, how are you dosing?

High flow -- you can never have too much for SPS!

If all the params are good, lighting is good, yet your SPS are browning out, then add more flow.